Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: Dance, modern dance, ballet, United states, choreography, intellectual history, 1960s, 1970s, postwar, New York City, urban history, U.S. presidents, performance, performing arts

About Me: Emily Hawk is a PhD candidate in the Department of History. Her research centers on 20th century American dance and cultural/intellectual history. She is particularly interested in how choreographers and audiences address and interpret American national identity, and how dance practice and performance more broadly reflect sociocultural attitudes and phenomena. Her dissertation will focus on aesthetic and institutional cross-pollination in the American “dance boom” of the 1960s and 1970s. It will look beyond the proscenium to understand the wide diffusion of dance performance as it contributed to national public discourse in this period. She is also interested in the cultural legacy of U.S. Presidents and has written on performative representations of the U.S. Presidents in the aftermath of the Watergate crisis.

In summer 2017, Emily completed an M.A., with distinction, in dance history from the University of Roehampton in London, U.K. Her thesis explored historical impulses in 21st-century reconstructions of early 20th century choreographic works by Isadora Duncan, Doris Humphrey, and Agnes de Mille. In 2016, Emily received her B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in dance and history at Franklin & Marshall College.

Recent Publications: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/stages-streets-and-screens-the-geography-of-nyc-dance-in-the-1960s-1970s-dance-boom-1